Between The Lines - Jon Devine: Lake Erie Algae Bloom and Toledo Drinking Water Ban Sparks Concern for Nation’s Water Supply (Week Ending Aug. 29, 2014)

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

Thank you for donating

If you've made a donation and wish to receive thank you gifts for your donation, be sure to send us your mailing address via our Contact form.

See our thank you gifts for your donation.

The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

Subscribe to our Weekly Summary & receive our FREE Resist Trump window cling

(Car window cling)

Email us with your mailing address at contact@btlonline.org to receive our "Resist Trump/Resist Hate" car window cling!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

BTL Blog

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Special Programming

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Progressive Resources

A compilation of activist and news sites with a progressive point of view

Share this content:

|

Subscribe to BTL

Podcasts: direct or via iTunes

Subscribe to Program Summaries, Interview Transcripts or Counterpoint via email or RSS feed

If you have other questions regarding subscriptions, feeds or podcasts/mp3s go to our Audio Help page.

Between The Lines Blog

Stay connected to BTL

Learn how to support our efforts!

Tweets by @BTLRadioNews

Lake Erie Algae Bloom Reveals Lax Regulation and Wider Threat to Nation's Water Supply

Posted Aug. 20, 2014

Interview with Jon Devine, senior attorney in the water program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

Two major drinking water disasters have hit the U.S. so far this year. In January, a chemical used in processing coal, and about which very little is known, poured into the Elk River which serves as the drinking water supply for 300,000 West Virginians. In July, a toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie led to a temporary drinking water ban in Toledo, Ohio, which draws its water supply from Lake Erie.

The two problems have different origins, but they both reflect the fact that what was once a universally provided public good in the U.S. – clean, safe water – is now threatened due to lax enforcement of pollution regulations under the Clean Water Act, little protection for tributary streams and wetlands and poor maintenance of aging water infrastructure. Lobbyists from the agriculture industry have aggressively opposed strengthening government regulations that protect clean water supplies.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Jon Devine, senior attorney in the water program of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He says the common thread is the interrelationship of our surface waters and our drinking water supplies. About 124 million people in the U.S. get their drinking water from surface waters as opposed to underground sources. Here, he discusses the particular problem in Toledo, where the algae bloom resulted from nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from agriculture and sewage system runoff, and what can be done about it.

JON DEVINE: Nitrogen and phosphorus pollution isn't just one problem, it's a bunch. So, solving it is going to mean a suite of solutions as well. There are a variety of sources of these pollutants from row crop agriculture, but also industrial livestock operations, urban areas that have storm water runoff that picks up all kinds of stuff and dumps it into our waterways, overflows from aging sewer systems, and sewage treatment plants that have these pollutants in their discharge. So, we're going to need to rein in that pollution from all of those sources where they are contributing to these kinds of algae blooms. The good news is we have the tools to reduce the likelihood of these outbreaks, but we need to get over the political opposition that has blocked them so far.

One of the most basic things we can do and what is the biggest current opportunity in this area is to move forward on an important proposed federal rule that would better protect tributary streams and wetlands that can serve as natural filters of some of these pollutants and that can also trap runoff that would otherwise whisk them to our waterbodies, but that's been vigorously opposed by discharging industry and by the agriculture industry.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Why do they oppose that?

JON DEVINE: I don't know. It's a very commonsense initiative. It would actually just restore protections to streams and wetlands that had long been protected, prior to a pair of Supreme Court decisions and Bush administration policies in the 2000s. These things are important natural buffers against pollution. They also help provide in their own right drinking water to millions of Americans – these small, seasonal and rain-dependent streams support drinking water for 117 million Americans.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Jon Devine, how much of this problem is related to the poor state of infrastructure in this country?

JON DEVINE: Well, aging and aged infrastructure is a big problem. In a number of places – the Great Lakes is one and New England is another place where they are concentrated – we have sewage systems that carry the sewage from people's homes and businesses in the same pipes as runoff from parking lots and streets, and usually on dry days and small rain days, that goes to a sewage treatment plant. But on days when it's wetter, they are designed to overflow, so you get a mixture of raw sewage and stormwater going directly into water bodies without treatment. And that can have many of these pollutants that cause algae blooms, but also bacteria and viruses that can make people sick. Dealing with that is a big challenge that cities really need to help do over the next several years, but it's a many hundreds of billions dollars of investment over the next couple of decades, according to EPA. So we think the best solution to those sewage overflows, to stormwater in urban areas, is to require development to be designed in a way that retains water that would otherwise flow off. So, using techniques that we call green infrastructure, things like rain gardens, permeable pavement, green roofs. Things that capture water rather than of cause it to run off and become pollution.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And those solutions wouldn't be nearly as expensive as redoing all the old water pipes...

JON DEVINE: They are in many cases much more cost-effective, and they have additional benefits in the communities in which they're located; green solutions like vegetation that can purify the air, that can reduce urban heat effect, and all sorts of other things. People also just like to live near features like this.

BETWEEN THE LINES: But those old pipes will still need to be replaced, right?

JON DEVINE: That's true, and it's something that really does need to happen in many cities on a grand scale. Like I said, EPA has estimated there are many billions of dollars of needs on the infrastructure side, both drinking water and waste water, over the next 20 years, and that's going to take shared effort from all of us who use these systems, but also investing in the kinds of solutions we talked about that minimize the burden on those systems when they are used.

For more information on Natural Resources Defense Council’s Water Program, visit nrdc.org.